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themaclean · 16 days

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We Don't Have To Be Friends (1/2) Characters: Cooper Howard/Lucy MacLean. Summary: 3,507 words, Post Season One -- character study that was meant to be PWP, but then ended up being entirely plot. Part two will be smut or I will krill myself. Warnings: Nothing you wouldn't see in the show. ( Ao3 ) > Part One | Part Two | Part Three <

Cooper never thought much about Hollywood anymore.

He had no reason to and no time either— but the thoughts bubbled up when he saw how the gold thread of his shirt dulled and familiar street signs melted into slack arches. Sometimes, he’d catch sight of a tattered newspaper with names he recognized or faces of people long since dead.

But nothing made him think of Hollywood the way Lucy did.

It hit him one afternoon with a nasty churn, that flash of the old world that locked his knees mid-stride. It was pathetic, really, when he thought about it now.

It was the flash of Lucy's Vault-Tec-sponsored smile over her shoulder, her thin hand with a necrotized finger pointing ahead of them at some landmark she’d heard of. With her head turned at just the right angle, and the sun was low as it caught the edges of her cheeks and lashes…

She had the sort of face girls in the movies had: clear skin, big eyes, and neat hair. Pretty — beautiful, actually, but not as a matter of compliment. Beautiful in the way she’d make a good price at any given market if he was inclined to sell her. Beautiful in the way people loved to exploit.

That’s the lifeblood of Hollywood—that churning mass of young talent desperate to prove they had what it takes. They’d sweet talk whoever they needed to, go to the parties, and chat his ear off about how amazing he’d been in whatever movie had come out lately, about the sponsorships they’d been offered, and about the dresses they got sent. They’d slip him their number and hold his bicep too long like they’d been taught to by managers and mothers alike.

Dozens of pretty women rushed to audition for the role of arm candy. They’d audition to play the mayor's daughter, the farmer's daughter, or so-and-so’s daughter. They’d always been the damsel. Then, whatever cowboy he’d been hired to play would toss the pretty woman onto the back of Sugarfoot and ride off into the sunset. The sort of girl who'd be gone by the next movie or end up married to a director, so she'd quit acting.

And, much like all the girls in Hollywood Cooper had spent time with, Lucy had changed. She had the same optimism, but it’d dulled; her marketable face now held tired, empty eyes. It was like she finally caught onto the world’s current: no sunset and no next movie.

Cooper couldn’t fault her. It's a strange journey to discover what to do to survive.

“Hey Cooper — is that it?” Lucy asked, repeating herself. The sprawl of buildings ahead was dotted with torches and candles.

Cooper nodded, his hand firm on Dogmeat’s collar.

A short strip of buildings stood out against the expanse of desert and dry shrubs. Each building leaned towards another, with sheet metal fastened with unskilled welding. Several turrets puttered away, seeking whatever wasn’t humanoid enough. Strips of fabric and tin cans garlands peppered the buildings' front. The smaller buildings on either side were your standard fare: a repair shop, a medic, a trader with a little diner area.

But the one Cooper was after stood out for its neon sign—Hell’s Oasis.

Hell’s Oasis served its purpose—it was a decent place to get information, and the people minded their business. They weren’t too bothered with ghouls or mutants as long as you had caps. The place often served as a meeting ground for bounty hunters and their contractors. It was also one of the more upscale places, as they wouldn’t harvest organs unless you died of natural causes.

And, if you couldn’t fight or forage for survival, you could fuck for it.

(Not that Cooper ever wasted caps on the whores who took residence within Hell’s Oasis. He’d sooner pay people to fuck off than spend the night with him.)

Cooper grabbed Lucy by the nape of her neck to yank her close and keep her firmly by his side. Most people he brought here, he left here — call it a force of habit to handle her so roughly.

“I can walk, y’know,” Lucy hissed.

“Stick close,” Cooper clicked his tongue at her, and a slight hiss followed. His grip flexed to further the message that she’d do well to follow his guidance.

They made their way through the hotel lobby, the moldy carpet slick against the floor with dirt and grease from the world outside. A few people chattered away in the attached bar, laughing at jokes Cooper couldn’t make out. Casino chips clattered on the table as they played made-up card games.

Long dead plants clung to arid dirt, the sticks of old ferns wilting against one another. Metal crates were lashed together in each corner of the alcove where the front desk sat, providing a makeshift cage between the staff and the patrons. Several girls rushed past Cooper and Lucy, jeering and cackling as they approached the bar. They were clad in lacy nightgowns. He couldn’t tell if they knew they were lingerie rather than clothes or if they’d even care.

“It’s so lively here,” Lucy said, a pang of something in her face.

“It happens in pockets,” Cooper said with a shrug of his shoulder. Little uh… spots of life.”

“Must be why they call it an oasis.”

Cooper rolled his eyes as they reached the front desk. Magazines sat in thick stacks with information about local tours in the area and a guide to the national parks. An abandoned handbag was tucked against the desk, which Lucy eyed with curiosity.

Cooper slapped the front desk bell a few times, a gargling growl low in his throat.

They needed this break after a couple of weeks on the road together. Water was getting sparse, and he wanted to be ready to meet with whoever the fuck Hank had run off to. And in such an open desert, there’s no sense traveling at night, and all manner of dumb shit came up along the way.

It was always something. People needed help or some dumb cunt trying to pick a fight, resupplies, rest… He didn’t like helping people much, but Lucy argued with him whenever they tried to go on without at least trying. And whether the people lived or died, at least they tried. That was her argument.

But Lucy listened to him a little more now, and he was as patient as he could be with her.

Cooper rang the bell again. He wanted a room, and the chattering laughter in the bar was only making his aches worse.

Priscilla appeared from behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain. Her hairline was hidden beneath a thick headscarf with puffy blond curls bouncing beneath it. The last time he’d been here, her hair had begun to rot out of her skull. He guessed it’d only gotten worse. She’s still pretty, mirroring that old-world red lip with pin curls.

“Oh my God, is that you, Coop? I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Priscilla said in a slow, low voice. She had a rasp to it, always had, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the radiation or a smoking habit.

“Was underground,” Cooper said with a lazy smile. He wouldn’t mention that he’d been underground in a literal sense, trapped in a coffin.

“Well, it’s nice for you to come to see us and…” Priscilla’s gaze slid to Lucy, that usual surprise swelling up at the sight of a genuine Vault Dweller. They weren’t hard to spot. “Ah, you turning her in for a bounty?”

Lucy’s head snapped towards him, a mixture of shock and disgust.

“No,” Cooper shook his head, his grip firm on Lucy’s neck to turn her head away from him. His fingers tensed before they dropped away altogether, brushing across Lucy’s shoulder. “Tag-along. Helpin’ her uh…” He picked through the words that came to mind, cautious not to share too much. “Adjust to the surface.”

Priscilla’s jaw squared as she stared Lucy down.

“We’re just lookin’ for a room, some food,” Cooper said before she could pry further. “Usual fare.”

“Please,” Lucy said, like Cooper had forgotten, and it was important to say. “The usual fare, please.”

“She speaks,” Priscilla said in a purr.

Cooper had to give Lucy credit. She’d stayed quiet much longer than he’d expected.

“Oh, we’ll also need water,” Lucy said, looking up at Cooper. “For cleaning and drinking. I’m not sure if you separate it that way or if you reuse it unless you have showers.”

Priscilla narrowed her eyes. “Running water? We can get you a bucket of water, sweetness. That alright with you?”

“It works great for me. Big fan of buckets. They’re the backbone of agriculture and cleaning, really, if you think about it…” Lucy agreed, her smile as bright as the neon sign by the front window.

Priscilla looked at Cooper and then at Lucy, repeating the loop before she sauntered behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain strung up with zip ties. The distant hum of a generator underscored the silence as Cooper picked over the board of caricatures. Plenty of people were banned from the premises or with a bounty on their heads — no one stood out on the board, at least.

“She was giving us a weird look,” Lucy leaned closer to Cooper, feigning a swipe of her hand through her hair. The floor creaked as she shifted her weight closer to him. “Is it the bucket thing? I panicked.”

Cooper scoffed from the back of his throat.

“It is safe here, right? You trust her?”

“It’s safe,” Cooper bared his teeth at Lucy, begging her to return to the docile silence she’d thrived in.

“Then why — ”

Cooper hissed for her to shh through clenched teeth.

Priscilla pushed past the curtain. She gripped a little blue card with faded gold edges. A key with a golden ball chain was attached to the edge. It felt strangely archaic to be so formal about lodgings, but it was why he liked this place.

“I guess it makes sense,” Priscilla said as she slid the key to Cooper. She nodded to Lucy. “You wanting a girl who’s more… Old—world flavor. It reminds you of the golden years, hm?”

“Six, right?” Cooper ignored her question, his gaze fixed to the card.

“Six,” Priscilla repeated, her gaze on Lucy.

Cooper tossed a few caps onto the front desk, the clatter of metal their own punctuation. He notched his head towards the stairs, and Dogmeat and Lucy followed in stride. He was eager for the simple things — water, food, and a moment to let his bags rest.

“Wanting a girl…” Lucy smiled, mumbling more of Priscilla’s words under her breath.

After several flights of stairs and a few hours, Cooper felt all the better. He’d eaten his fill and enjoyed the peace of an enclosed room. He didn’t often allow himself such a luxury, as being in a settlement put a target on your back for any larger groups. But it’d been two weeks since they’d had proper rest out of the elements.

Tracking Hank wasn’t easy, either. That suit meant he could skip over all the pocked landscape and roaming threats. What would take him an hour to travel by air was a day for them sometimes, a fact that spurred Cooper on. But they couldn’t rush, as rushing would only get them killed.

One wrong step and you were deathclaw chow.

“God, more, please!”

And there went the silence. Cooper’s eye twitched; his lipless mouth sneered at the screeches.

Whoever had taken up residence in room five was making the most of their money — an hour straight of screams and moans, an hour straight of Lucy pretending to read. She’d picked up a holotape at the last outpost they’d stopped at; something about a sequel she’d always wanted to continue reading.

By the second hour, it wasn’t so much that room five stopped fucking. But they at least got a lot quieter about it. The occasional shriek or moan rattled through the air vents, but it was far and few between.

Lucy lay across the double bed, her boots discarded beside the door. Her vault suit hung from the defunct radiator. Her washing was all done, and she’d freshened up, the usual Lucy shit. She’d helped herself to the water and changed into some pajama set she’d pilfered from a house a few days back.

“I think it’s nice,” Lucy said into the open air of the hotel room.

Cooper looked up from his shotgun, teeth bared like he was trying to smile. “The quiet?”

“No,” Lucy smiled at the wall between them and room five. “That people can find love, even now.”

Cooper couldn’t stop himself from laughing at that. The cackles shook from low in his lungs and caught him so off-guard he hacked up some foul muck into his palm. He hissed through a wheezed breath as he fumbled with his RadAway puffer.

“I mean it! It’s not funny!”

“That ain’t love, Vaultie,” Cooper coughed out, his eyes narrowed as drool and tears mingled on his cheeks. He wiped his face, fine skin catching against the scarred, leathery mess. “That…” He pointed to the wall. “S’probably a whore and her John making the most of the caps.”

Lucy’s eyes darted as she picked apart what he’d said. “John..?”

“John’s a term for uh…” Cooper’s jaw strained against a smile, though it was far too cruel to be kind. “A guy who pays for sex.”

“Ah, wasteland slang,” she said with a solemn nod, as if it made sense she hadn’t caught on immediately.

“Old world slang,” Cooper corrected.

Lucy looked around the hotel room anew, like she’d finally caught on to what this place really was. She scooted to the edge of the bed, to sit with her legs angled towards him. “That woman at the front desk said you’d want a girl who’s old world — she thought I was a prostitute. ”

“Maybe.”

Lucy crossed her arms as if she had more to say on the matter. But then she remained quiet, uncharacteristically so.

“S’waste of caps.”

“Hiring me to have sex with you? Actually, I know all about sexual gratification, so I think it’d be a great use of money — caps.”

Cooper stared Lucy down as if he couldn’t parse what she’d just said. “Paying anyone money to fuck you is a waste.” Cooper tongued his lips apart. “Bullets. Meds. There’s shit worth paying for. Sex is — ”

“Important.”

“Sex ain’t worth much.”

“To you, maybe,” Lucy frowned. “It’s an act of love and intimacy, and… It’s how humanity continues, and it’s — fun if done well.”

“You wanna waste your caps on some cock?” Cooper snapped, his hand flapping at the door. “Be my guest.”

“No,” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want to, but I’m saying that I… I think killing people is probably worse than sleeping with people for caps. If it’s to survive, I think it makes sense. Morally speaking.”

“Don’t,” Cooper snarled.

Cooper didn’t like how Lucy spoke to him most days, but this was a new, worse permutation. Her Vault-addled morality was sickening enough on its own, as she embodied whatever bullshit had been drip-fed to her by the company who’d bought her vault. Not that he was without sin, given the shit he’d done to survive this long.

But sex and love and all that shit was not front of mind. He needed to find his family and to know what happened to them. He didn’t need a two-cap blowjob from a stranger in the dim light of some bar. Though, in all honesty, his drug habit mixed with the amount of alcohol he’d drowned himself in, some nights got hazy.

There’s that animalistic, self-destructive part of him that won on his worst nights. The same part of him that kept him alive, the same part that let him do all the miserable shit he needed to do to survive.

But it’s certainly never been love. Not since Barb.

Never again, he’d wager.

"I had sex once," Lucy said this like it was a point of pride, now on her feet. She idled beside the bed, her gaze settled onto the empty space she’d been lying. "With my husband, but…" Her face twisted with this delayed amusement. She turned towards him, closing the gap between them.

Lucy’s eyes remained unfocused as she stared at the marked table between them, where his shotgun lay across a dirty cloth. "Does that make us both widows..? You said you have a family, right? So, you were probably married and had at least one kid. Not trying to presume, so tell me if I’m wrong, but… You said that in the observatory. That’s what you’re after."

Cooper parted his lips, a nasty tilt to his hairless brow.

Lucy gave a tight smile. "I was married. Only for a few hours, but… It was an arranged marriage, I didn’t meet him until the wedding. It turned out he was a raider from the surface posing as my match from Vault 32 and…" At this point, Lucy caught herself. “I feel for you, if you lost someone. That’s all.”

“You ain’t a widow.”

“Technically — ”

Cooper stood up, unable to stay seated. “You say you’re a widow like it’s a fact outta some book. The shit you went through — you’re an experiment gone wrong, not a damn widow,” Cooper said, his voice flat.

Lucy’s face twitched at his words as if she struggled to keep her smile. “Well, guess what? We’re all an experiment gone wrong, whether you’re in a vault or not.”

Cooper’s eyes twitched, narrowing in the dark of their hotel room. Room five was quiet, which made this moment all the worse. He didn’t like how she spoke about him, as if she knew what was happening in his mind. He wasn’t some wounded man looking for sympathy.

He wasn’t anything.

“Go back to your holotapes,” Cooper said with a jut of his chin. “You’ve been up here a few weeks, acting like you know how it is.”

“Well, I know we’ve all been screwed over by people hundreds of years ago, and I’m sorry if I’m not as beaten down by it as you, but — I’m just trying to share things with you, to…” Lucy struggled through her words, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. “We don’t have to be friends, but we have to be — something.”

The couple in room five screeched. Cooper tensed out of habit but relaxed again when he reasoned what the noise was. It didn’t solve the fierce look on Lucy’s face as she stared him down, her fists clenched by her pajama-clad thighs.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Lucy said, shaking her damp hair out of her face. She stood idle by the table as if she had just realized she had stepped towards him in their argument. There was a bird-like shake to her chest, her heart and lungs quick beneath bone.

It was moments like this that made his nature crystalline to him — that thin line she couldn’t perceive of how easy it’d be to string her up by the ankles and bleed her dry. Of how easy it’d be to slide into that ache for warm flesh between his teeth and blood down his throat.

Ghouls aren’t welcome in most settlements for a reason, and Lucy is too damn optimistic to learn that lesson.

Cooper tongued the inside of his cheek, and his teeth gnashed at the frayed edge of his lip. “We have to be something, huh?”

Lucy’s brow twitched, and her jaw strained as she tried to stand taller. She nodded as something like hope softened her stern expression.

It wasn’t hard to close the gap. It was even easier to grab that ponytail she always wore and yank her head close, fist tight in her hair as he brought her close. Her hand scrabbled against the table, and nails dug into the wood as their eyes met.

“Don’t you ever talk about my family again,” Cooper said, his voice level. “We clear?”

Lucy’s breathing redoubled, but she nodded. Her nostrils flared as he let her go with a firm shove. There was a real sense of satisfaction as he felt her perception of him shift as if she’d forgotten she was dealing with a monster rather than a man. As if the rotted skin and exposed tensions, or the gaping hole where his nose had once been, weren’t enough warning.

Pretty girls in Hollywood were overlooked as much in his time — all in the name of survival in a race that no one really won. You took your part and played it until the work dried up. Then, you prayed for sponsorships, deals, and other things to spare you from the real world.

He watched it with co-stars, time and again. It wasn’t much different now, just less rhinestones and more rads.

#cooper howard #lucy maclean #fallout spoilers #fallout #vaultghoul #cooper x lucy #my writing

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precious-little-scoundrel · 2 months

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Friends in the Crucible

MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU

1: Welcome to Hell Island

Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt

AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.

Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏

Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.

Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!

There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.

So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.

But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.

It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.

Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.

Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?

Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.

Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.

Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.

“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”

Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.

He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.

“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”

“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.

Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—

“All personnel prepare for landing.”

Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.

“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”

To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.

“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.

The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.

“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.

There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.

“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”

“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”

Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.

“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Lemons, sir.”

“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.

“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”

“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.

Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”

The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.

That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.

She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.

Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.

But no.

Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.

Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.

“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.

Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.

Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.

Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.

Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.

“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”

Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.

Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!

Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.

The sergeant looked away to the other side.

Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.

The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.

Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.

The sheet was tugged up all the way.

That triage was over.

Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.

“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-

“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”

“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.

They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.

“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ‘em under the wings!”

There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.

“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.

“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.

Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.

All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.

They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”

He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.

“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.

“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”

“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.

The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.

Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.

“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.

“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.

A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.

Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.

Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.

Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?

For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.

“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.

“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.

“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.

“Sir-“

“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”

“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.

“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”

“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.

“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.

“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.

“Yup, and we leave in ten.”

“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”

The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.

“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.

“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”

“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.

Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.

“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”

Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.

“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.

“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.

“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”

“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”

Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.

“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.

“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.

“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”

“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”

The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.

“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.

Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.

Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“

“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.

There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.

“You hit?”

“No. Read me, Benny-“

“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.

“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.

Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.

“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.

“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.

Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”

“You got it, commander.”

More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.

“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”

Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.

“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.

“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.

A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”

“How bad?”

“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.

Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.

“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.

“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.

“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.

“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.

“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.

“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”

“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.

“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”

Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”

“I know sir.”

“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”

“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.

“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.

By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.

“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.

“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”

The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.

It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.

“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.

She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.

Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.

He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”

“What the hell for?” Egan balked.

“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.

“I repeat -what the hell for?”

“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”

“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”

There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.

“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.

Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:

“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”

The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.

“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.

Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.

It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.

“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.

John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.

“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”

“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear

Leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.

“Leaning, leaning

Safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.

That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”

There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.

“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.

A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.

“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.

“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”

Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.

“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”

“So should you.” she hinted kindly.

“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”

“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.

“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”

“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”

“Kiss ‘em better?”

“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”

“She scares me.” he objected.

“And I don’t?”

“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.

“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.

“Buck!”

“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”

“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.

“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.

“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.

“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.

“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.

“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.

“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”

“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.

“What?”

“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”

Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.

“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”

“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.

“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.

“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.

“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.

“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.

That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“

“Well, mine do.”

“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“

“-you do though.”

“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”

Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“

“-What?”

“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .

“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”

“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”

“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”

“I am.”

“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”

“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”

“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.

“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.

“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”

“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.

“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”

“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.

“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.

Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“

“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”

Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.

When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.

Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.

“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”

Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.

She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.

“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.

“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”

“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.

“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”

He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.

She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.

The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.

As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.

“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“

“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.

“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.

“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”

Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”

“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”

“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.

“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.

“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.

“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.

“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”

“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”

“But it was pretty.”

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.

“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”

“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”

“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.

“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.

“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.

“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.

“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.

Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.

Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.

“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”

“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”

“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”

“Alright.”

“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”

Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.

Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.

“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“

“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”

“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”

“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.

“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.

“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”

“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.

He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”

Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he’d secured the fabric.

“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”

“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.

“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.

“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.

Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo

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#mota fanfiction #mine #archive #friends in the crucible #Gale Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven #austin butler #austin butler fanfiction #austin butler imagine #masters of the air #Bucky Egan #doc Egan #Maureen Kendeigh #iwo jima #hbo war #john egan #callum turner #Callum Turner fanfiction

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wiinterz · 3 months

Text

once lost, now found | john wick

pairing: john wick x black plus size fem!reader

genre: established relationship, one-shot

warnings: canon!john, typical violence, kidnapped!reader, physical violence, character death, angst, fluff

word count: 1.5k

summary: being in the crossfire of john’s old life, there’s a realization that he’ll always pick you over anything and anyone in his life; himself included.

☏ ᴛᴀʏ’s ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴛs: old one-shot!

recs | taglist | help hub | keanu reeves m.list

PATTERS OF RAIN HIT against a tin can that was laid on a concrete slab. The moon’s crescent-shaped the city into one walking circle. And street lights flickered as sounds of drunks, cars, and sobers moved around to find somewhere they could call home.

Chestnut-colored eyes peeked at a nearby building, white paint completely blocked out with graffiti, and cigarettes crushed up and tossed on the floor. Feeling your tired body being dragged to the empty building, your stomach turns as your bottom eyelashes catch your slipping tears, making sure they stayed on your waterline as the peculiar man had closed your mouth with tape. Your hands and legs were roped up, your body resting on the stranger’s left shoulder as he grumbled about your man, John.

Hearing his grating voice complain about John, and how stupid he is to have a woman knowing his job takes anything pure from him. Your chest raises high and fast, trying to keep yourself from freaking out as he places your body down on a metal chair, the coldness of the metal shocks your body, making you whimper.

He makes a hoarse laugh, pulling the tape off your mouth as he stuffs a shirt in your mouth, forcing you to gag on it.

He pushed your chair against a metal table, sitting beside you as he picks up a bottle of water and drink it.

“Ora aspettiamo The Babayaga.” He lets out another laugh, sighing to himself as he drinks the water, his watch ticking for a show.

John was in the middle of slicing a man’s arm off in a closed clothing store, the lights still on as dead bodies piled up around him. The more he killed, the more they ran to him, only to be shot down by his gun.

Anger riled his soul, hurt taking over in his eyes as his mind replayed the screams that left your mouth. He wondered how did you slip away from him in such little time?

Killing the last man as he placed a sword against his neck and his gun behind it, John shoots and pulls the sword back, watching the man fall to the floor, face hitting against someone’s dead body.

John’s hair was now messed up and wet with sweat and blood, his face had tiny splatters, some so close to his eye as his blue t-shirt and black pants became stained permanently. He had lots of wounds on him, the back of his shirt slightly ripped showing a large diagonal cut on him.

Picking up another gun, he checks to make sure there was enough ammo in it. Once he walks out of the shop, he grunts, feeling like he lost a huge part of himself and dignity as the night prolongs.

He could only think back to you, worrying if you were in pain, if you were bruised or cut up. He could only imagine what he would do if he saw even a little paper cut on you by the man that caused this to happen.

His shoes scrape against the floor, knowing where to go. He knew deep in his heart who caused this, who betrayed his promise.

A groan escapes from his lips, his bloody hands falling to rest on the wall before he walks into the empty building. He stands there for a moment, regaining his strength and energy.

Once he breathes out heavily, John’s eyes ignite with despise as he hears a muffled laugh.

Making his way in, he pushes a door open down the long hallway, seeing a dim light create the ability to see. His heart stops in seconds, breath caught in his mouth as your eyelash lets a tear escape like a leaf letting a raindrop hit to another leaf.

There he stood, the man you fell in love with for a lifetime and more. He held a gun under his arm, his eyes soften at the sight of you. Your hair is a mess, your mouth is forced to bite against the shirt, and you sitting patiently and scared.

He then looks at the man that sat beside you, looking at his expensive silver watch with gold in the middle. Silver-fox short hair, with skin pale as sand, fingernails clipped, his pinky finger long and slim as possible. His lips were light pink and plump and wrinkles appeared under his eyes as he smiled at John.

“So glad you could make it to the family dinner, Wick.” The man announces, a hearty laugh escaping his lips while John rolls his eyes, then looks back at you, motioning his fingers to see if you were okay. You motioned back to him a no, and he sighs.

“Giosuè,” is all he mutters out, keeping himself calm and collected as always as if you didn’t exist in the room. He had to do that, to keep you alive, to see you breathe. A fraction of his heart had been shut down from the death of Helen and the last thing he needed was to see you murdered; something that can be prevented.

Giosuè looks back at you, pushing your chin up a little, forcing you to stare at John while tears continue to fall, trickling to Giosuè’s fingers.

“Pretty girl, sad to see you like this.” He points out, moving his hand away as John squints a little, feeling his heart become slashed.

“You see, you made a promise…that if and when you come back, I would be the first person to see you. You also promised me the killing of my brother and father, we made that promise when you were leaving home. To go to what? Normalcy? John Wick, The Babayaga…begs to find normalcy in a cold world, that he, made people fear him. Damn.”

Giosuè’s Italian accent comes out, standing from his chair, a gun resting in his back pocket, your eyes widened once you see it, alarming John.

“I’m mad now, because of you and your broken promises, my brother and father…hm whatever, you know the story.” He chuckles, sighing heavily once he finally reaches John, standing in front of him as John’s face stays relaxed, not a smirk, or a sign of worry.

John looks down at Giosuè and scoffs, “And you bring my girlfriend into your family affairs.” His voice showed no emotion, John went into a state you’ve never seen him in.

“She’s a pretty girl, and you know how I am…I like pretty things…I see pretty I take it.” Giosuè looks back at you and tilts his head with a smile. “You crying? John look she’s crying.” He lets out a maniacal laugh as he turns back to John whose eyes pierce your soul.

He had a different type of attitude when it came to your safety, your life before his, forever and always.

“Mmh.” The only thing that slips out from his lips, you continue to cry, trying to believe John will get you out of here safely. His hand pulls out a dart, one of the darts an assassin tried to use on him. Giosuè was too busy mocking you, calling you adorable for becoming hysterical in a situation like this.

John walks up behind Giosuè, the dart held between his index and middle fingers. He held his breath, making mental notes on how Giosuè moved his body.

As a ticking bomb, John’s fingers stifled Giosuè’s neck, the dart pushing into him. In hindsight, John hasn’t been sure if his plan would work out correctly. The only way to know was the outcome, and each ending dealt with you being freed.

Yet as Giosuè abruptly stopped taunting you, his hand quickly goes to behind his neck where John pulls the dart swiftly. Once he sees Giosuè's hand, he shoves the dart back in the middle of it, making Giosuè yell in terror. John then takes out a gun from behind him and shoots his spine, then Giosuè’s knee pit.

Giosuè’s body plummets down to the floor, and a terror of screams leaves his lips. His fingers scrape the floor, trying to crawl to you yet, John shoots him in the head, watching his body jolt a little.

John’s eyes dart back at you and puts up his gun while picking up Giosuè’s. You soaked the t-shirt with your saliva and tears, your dark brown skin bruise with purple and a bit of red from the tight bounds. Making his way to you, his right hand pulls your face up to him, he has tears ready to fall, yet he doesn’t.

His soul had become a cage of his nightmares, banging against his heart each time he saw you. If he could create heaven, he would simply make you the goddess of it. If he had a paint brush he would paint calligraphy and fill empty canvases of you and about you. His heart rang out for you, slipping into your hands and hoping you would restore whatever was taken away from it.

Taking a pocket knife out, John cuts the ropes off you, pulling the t-shirt out of your mouth as you could finally relax your jaw. His thumb comes across your face, catching pretty salts. Your breath pattern started to slowly go back to normal. Feeling his right hand pick up your wrist, he grunts at the makeshift bruises and cuts on your pretty skin.

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” He lets out a staggering breath, his voice almost getting caught in his throat. He rubbed your wrists, wrists that had fibers of straw in them. He brings up your right wrist to his lips and kisses it, taking up your other wrist he kisses it up to your shoulder. Looking back at you, his hands immediately wrap around you, holding you tightly as if he relives the time he was told Helen was dying.

You take a moment to wrap your arms around him and when you do, your body is in alarm from the pain that spikes you. You rest your head on his shoulder, allowing your body to be loose on him. Your tears soaked the wounds he earned.

You held onto Johnathan as if you both were at sea, bodies laid on a raft, and the ocean roared throughout the night with tides trying to pull you in a different direction.

John pulls away, looking at you with tears, your weakened hand rests on his cheek. Pulling him closer to you, you press your lips against his, holding him for a moment as your tears intertwine with his.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” He repeats, his words getting stronger each time, making you believe it.

You lay your body on him, permitting him to pick you up bridal style. His eyes fixated on yours as his heart beats at the same rate as yours, finally back to normalcy again.

When he went too far he returned to the same man you fell in love with years ago. When you disappeared you came back as the goddess of his dreams, the one that lit the candles in his heart when they left.

John found his normalcy once again and this time, he promised to not fail like the last.

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spicyyy-muffin · 1 year

Text

Emberred Dreams

Warnings Death, torture, blood, gore, she has a nightmare disorder, talks of ptsd and other mental disorders, smoking cigarettes, friends with untold feelings arch.

Ghost x F!Reader

Reader has night terrors, and ghost likes midnight cigarette breaks.

Having night terrors every night wasn't anything new. This life wasn't easy, but it was the one I chose. Not every mission was successful and those ones especially had a hard time leaving my subconscious.

After my first failed mission I learned quickly I couldn't sleep in the same room as my team. The nights I didn't wake myself up screaming, others did.

There was no mental health advocate patting me on the back after witnessing hundreds of innocent's bloody death. And if there was, I probably would have nothing to do with them.

Being vulnerable was a sign of weakness, and everyday was an example that weakness got you killed.

The other guys in 141 were very stoic, never talking about their feelings, never shedding a tear. It was an unspoken rule.

But getting stuck in a warehouse 20 miles from base, meant we were forced to lay low. And that we all had to camp out in the biggest room, one of us staying awake to watch.

Soap laid an extra shirt on the old wooden floors. "I can go first, give you guys the chance to rest."

I spat my sunflower seeds in an empty tin can. "Nah its cool, I can take first watch Soap." Ghost's eyes met mine across the room. With three other highly intelligent men in this room how long would it take before they figured me out?

"Okay."

Ghost, Soap and James lay still on the ground. Even with the constant checks, and knowing we were safe. My thoughts were running at a pace I couldn't peel back.

There was only so long I could stay awake. And the last time I fell asleep around someone, I ended up in the clinic the next morning with an evaluation on whether or not I was capable of being in the field.

There was no way I was going to be sent home because of my stupid nightmares.

Three hours.

I was surveilling the front yard through a small break in the curtain when a hand brushed my shoulder.

"I can take over, get some sleep."

I shook my head at the masked man. "No I'm okay, go back to bed."

His eyes shot between mine and the makeshift bed on the floor. "We have to be awake in a few hours, don't try and be tough, get some sleep sergeant."

I huffed out a quick breath, "I said I'm fine ghost. Go back to bed."

"I wasn't asking."

I propped the rifle against the wall not making eye contact with the stubborn man and turning towards the place he just laid sleeping.

I couldn't put something in my mouth that would be weird. Covering my face wouldn't help. Sleeping on my stomach didn't mask the noise either.

But the exhaustion seeping through my blood wasn't enough to make me stand for the next four hours.

I laid down, putting my mouth in the crook of my elbow. I could feel his eyes burning into me, but I knew he wouldn't ask.

I woke up to cold metal gliding across my thigh. Opening my eyes a man with a dark beard and familiar eyes met me. "Goodmorning sunshine." His mouth moved into a sly grin.

Bringing my arms up to my chest to grab a hidden knife, I noticed the rough rope holding them together. My eyes darted across the room, and the sight made me instantly nauseous.

Soap's throat was ripped out, esophagus on the other side of the room. And ghost.. The man with whom I never told.

Why did I never tell him? A sob was ripped from my chest, "Simon?"

"Dead." The man stood from crouched knees but my eyes didn't leave the blood stained mask of the man I loved.

"It's a shame really. But maybe if you weren't so pathetic and fell asleep they would still be alive."

My vision blurred, tears tickling down my face in their wake.

"He asked me to spare you, take him instead. How heroic?"

He slammed his jagged knife into the plush of my thigh. I cried out. For the physical pain or emotional I wasn't sure.

Ghost's body moved. Eyes blinking open, immidiently my assailant's eyes shot to him.

"Well what do we have here?" He ripped the knife out of me walking over to him.

"Y/n?" Ghost blinked his eyes open, bloodshot using a free hand to grab his head.

"Tch tch tch, young love. How cute." His gun lifted ghost's head up further.

"What a shame it must end."

He cocked his gun pointing it at his temple, my scream's bursting my ear drums.

My body shook. Someone's hands on me pulling me back and forth. "No! Please-" I sobbed thrashing around trying to pull my hands free.

"Ghost! NO! Ghost please-"I shook my head squeezing my eyes shut forcing more tears down my cheeks.

"Wake up darling, please open your eyes."

My eyes shot open, I flew up gripping my knees looking around the room at the three men staring at me with guns in hands ready to attack.

Ghost was the closest, bent over, arms still out. He was the one who woke me up.

I shook my head, grabbing a pack of smokes and a lighter. Fuck I needed some air.

The cold air spoke wonders for wiping the guilt from my conscious.

The wooden stairs creaked under my weight, and again when a second body joined.

We sat in silence for a few minutes until he broke it. "Wanna talk about it?"

I passed the cigarette to him.

"How much did you hear?" He inhaled.

"Not a lot."

I shot my glance to him but he stayed staring at the frosted embers.

"You're so full of shit." My mouth spread into a tiny smile as his shoulders shook from silent laughter.

"Don't report me please." His eyes shot to mine.

"You're dense aren't you sergant?"

He dropped the cigarette to the ground stepping on it before crouching down to my sat figure.

He stared at me before placing his cold hands on my cheeks wiping fresh tears I didn't know were there.

"What's the matter baby?"

I took his wrists in my hands.

"I have feelings for you, I have have feelings for you I need you to know that. Please, I just-" I shook my head, "I just need you to know that I'm so scared-" His lips paused my rambling his other hand sliding through the strands of my hair.

He pulled away resting his masked forehead on mine, I realized he must of pulled it up when I was word vomiting.

"I'm not going anywhere, and Im not gonna let anything happen to you."

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, kissing me every once in a while. It wasn't until the sun met the horizon and I realized the lap I was curled up in just how long we had been outside.

He mouth was rested next to my ear, hands running down my arms. He took a shaky breath, "I can't say the words I want to. But I feel deeply for you, and I'm not sure anything can change that."

I turned my head placing my lips on his.

"I feel deeply for you too."

He smiled in the crown of my head.

"And if your lips are that pretty I'm not ready to see the rest of your face."

He peppered kisses along my cheek.

"You're cute but when this moment is over, you are gonna tell who that motherfucker was so I can put his severed hands in a display case."

Lmk what you think!

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corroded-hellfire · 1 year

Note

Hi! Idk if you’re taking requests right now, but if you are could you do one that’s like the Chrissy scene? Like reader is really upset about something and goes to Eddie to buy off him but he refuses and cheers her up?

Perhaps the cutest Eddie scene we got! I love this so much and I really enjoyed writing it.

Warnings: mentions of alcohol abuse, mentions of drug use, brief mention of physical abuse, language, i think that's it?

Words: 2.7k

“Just say no,” First Lady Nancy Reagan is always saying. But the wife of the President of the United States wasn’t currently a high school student. So what if you wanted a little pot to take the edge off? It didn’t make you a bad person. It made you a stressed teenager.

The early spring air was still a bit chilly in Indiana, so you hug your sweater tighter against your body as you make your way across the empty football field. It’s the emptiest you’ve ever seen the stands, only ever having been here during a game before. But it’s much more peaceful this way, and your pounding head is grateful. The sound your sneakers make changes as you step from the fake grass of the field to the natural, overgrown bed of the forest beyond it. The light has suddenly diminished as well, the umbrella of the trees blocking out the majority of the rays. It only makes you colder and you cross your arms over your chest.

One of your best friends had arranged this meeting between you and Eddie in the woods. You’re not sure you’ve ever actually spoken to the boy before. Of course you knew who he was; who didn’t with all the attention he brought upon himself? But you were a year behind him, and you’d never shared any classes. Luckily, your friend was a regular customer of his and had no trouble setting up the deal with the metal head.

The lonely picnic table comes into view, and you settle yourself on the bench, dropping your backpack on the wood in front of you. Originally, you’d hoped Eddie would already be there when you arrived, but it was kind of nice sitting in the quiet wooded area. There wasn’t a whole lot of quiet in your life, so it was a nice change of pace.

The rustling of the leaves alerts you to Eddie’s presence before you see him casually stroll his way into the clearing, black leather jacket half zipped up and old tin lunch box dangling from his fingers. He shoots you an easy smile as he settles on the bench across from you, thumping the lunch box down right across from your backpack.

“Funny seeing you here,” Eddie jokes as he unzips his jacket.

“Just happened to be walking by and thought this would be a nice spot to buy some drugs,” you say, making Eddie snort a laugh.

“Okay, right to the point,” Eddie says. He flips open his lunch box and rifles through it, his tongue sticking out in concentration as he looks. “Know what you want?”

“Um.” Your brow pinches up as you think, and when Eddie glances up at you he can’t help but find it incredibly cute. “Weed?”

“You asking or telling?”

“I don’t know,” you admit with a sigh. Eddie raises his eyebrows as he watches you rub your hands over your face.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” you say, dropping your hands down to the table. “Peachy.”

“Look, uh,” Eddie says as he closes the lid on his metal box. “Not to drive away potential customers, but are you sure you want to buy?”

“Just wanna relax,” you admit with a shrug.

Eddie holds his chin in one hand and drums his fingers against the table with the other.

“There are other ways to relax. Alcohol?”

“No,” you say, more forcefully than intended. “No alcohol.”

“Okaaaay,” Eddie drawls out, looking down at his ring clad hand. “But, uh, weed and alcohol kind of get you to the same place, just take a different route.”

“Not true,” you say, crossing your arms and avoiding his eyes. “Weed relaxes and calms people. Alcohol makes people violent and mean.”

Eddie raises his eyes at your words, looking at you in concern. He knew all too well the ill effects alcohol could have; he’d seen it many times with many people, he was just trying to call your bluff. But the way you said it made Eddie think you were talking from personal experience – and not having partaken yourself in the drink. He wants to ask again if everything is okay, but he knows you’ll just deny it. Why would you tell him anyway? You’d never even spoken before. That didn’t mean you two had never interacted in the past though.

“Do you, uh, still talk to that neighbor of yours?”

You look up at Eddie, brow furrowing in confusion.

“What?”

“Your neighbor. Lily Warner? Werner? Warbler? Shit, I don’t know. The one who had the long blonde curls that married the guy who works with Wayne?”

Recognition dawns on your face and you lean back, jaw dropping and eyes widening.

“Oh! I completely forgot about her. No, she moved out after they got married. I forgot you were at that wedding, too.”

“Yeah.” Eddie scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Wayne forced me. Joke was on him, though. He never asked me to go to any formal shit again.”

“Because you took a bite out of the cake before the bride and groom cut it?” you ask, doing your best to hold back a laugh. You’re smiling though, and that was Eddie’s goal.

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Eddie asks with a shrug. “I’d never been to a wedding before, and no one explained to me how these things worked. Dinner was a buffet, so I thought the dessert was too!”

“Fuck, how old were we? Eleven? Twelve?”

“I can’t speak for you, but I know I was thirteen because that was two days after I had my first kiss.” His smug expression has you letting out a small giggle, which Eddie is instantly addicted to.

“Is that so? With who?” you ask.

“Betty Wilson.”

“Really?” you ask, practically shouting it at him across the table.

“What?” he asks, pretending to be offended by your outburst.

“She was the biggest bully on the playground! Even in middle school!”

“I know,” Eddie says with a laugh. “She said I could either give her a kiss or get a black eye.”

“I would’ve taken the black eye,” you tell him.

“You weren’t a thirteen-year-old boy,” he says, leaning in towards you with a smirk.

“Boys,” you say with a playful eye roll.

“Well, that’s it.” Eddie locks his lunch box and stands up from the table, acting like he’s going to leave the woods. “I can’t be friends with someone who talks to me like that.”

Leaves crunch under Eddie’s shoes as he takes a few steps, but he halts at the sound of your laughter. He smiles to himself before schooling his face into neutrality before turning back to face you.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“You’re so dramatic,” you say, shaking your head at him. You’re still chuckling a little bit and Eddie’s willing to get as dramatic as he needs to as long as it keeps you happy.

“Me?” Eddie gasps. “Dramatic? Well, I never.” He drops the lunch box back on the table and flips his hair over his shoulder like he’d seen women do in the soap operas that were on television when he skipped school.

“You made me laugh at the wedding, too,” you say as you recall the memory. “I was bored out of my mind, then I looked up and you had sauce from the pasta all in your teeth and you were acting like someone punched you in the mouth.”

Eddie throws his head back and lets out a cackle.

“Shit, I forgot all about that. When you laughed, your mom looked up, saw, and thought I’d hurt myself or something and came over to me all scared. How’s your mom doing?”

At the mention of your mother, Eddie sees you tense up. You practically curl in on yourself, a crease coming to your forehead. With a frown, Eddie comes back to sit down across from you.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Eddie says. He goes to reach out towards you but thinks better of it and keeps his hand to himself.

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s fine. You didn’t do anything.”

“I don’t want to pry, but um, is she okay?” Eddie’s voice is soft and gentle, and the tenderness in it makes you feel like you could cry.

“She’s fine,” you say, venom laced in your words. This makes Eddie frown even more, and he looks down at his hands. He purses his lips as thoughts run wild through his mind. Something clicks and his eyes snap back up to your face.

“Is your mom drinking?”

Your shoulders fall, but you shake your head.

“No. Not her. Her boyfriend.” Your voice is weary and worn out, making a fist clench around Eddie’s heart. He nods in understanding as he digests the new information.

“He’s a mean drunk?”

“Very,” you confirm.

Suddenly, Eddie’s muscles tense and he clenches his fist. He leans in so his voice doesn’t have to be above a whisper for you to hear.

“Does he hurt you?”

The anger in his tone makes your heart swell, though it’s something any decent person would be mad about. When you look up to meet his eyes, there’s a fire in there as well that sends a shiver down your spine.

“No,” you assure him. “He’s just an asshole. To me and my mom. But she puts up with it and I don’t have a choice.”

Eddie’s jaw works as he tries to loosen up the muscles after clenching his teeth so tightly. At least the guy’s not laying a hand on you, but that doesn’t mean Eddie isn’t still pissed off at what you have to deal with. He runs his hand over his face and lets out a sigh.

“Unfortunately, drugs won’t solve your problem,” Eddie tells you. “Honestly? I don’t know how much they’ll even help the problem. But, um…”

You lift your head to look at Eddie when he trails off. It’s unusual for him to just go quiet, so you’re intrigued by whatever it is he clearly wants to say. When a hint of pinkness comes to his cheeks, you’re even more surprised. You weren’t sure Eddie Munson knew how to blush.

“I know that we don’t know each other well and that we’re not exactly friends,” Eddie starts, fingers fidgeting nervously with his rings. “But if you ever just want to get out of the house or need some time away from your mom or her boyfriend, you can just give me a call.” You meet his doe brown eyes and there’s an understanding there that you haven’t seen in anyone else. “I know what it's like to have someone in your own home make you feel like shit. And I guess now that I have a home where I don’t have to worry about that anymore, I want to extend that to you whenever you need it. Day or night, I don’t care. Call me and I’ll come get you.”

Tears threaten to spill from your eyes as you stare at the boy in front of you. Never did you think you’d find such kindness and empathy from anyone at your school, let alone Eddie. It puts a warmth in your heart that you hadn’t realized had been missing.

“Do you mean that?” you ask in a timid voice.

Eddie hears the wobble in your tone and this time he does reach across the table to place his hand on top of yours.

“Cross my heart, I do. Even if you want to just come over and get high, we can do that.”

“I thought drugs wouldn’t solve my problem?” you ask, the corner of your mouth twitching up in an involuntary smile.

“They won’t,” Eddie tells you plain and simple. “But if you’re staying with me and you’re in a safe place for the night, hell yeah, we can blaze up. Get some chips, some pot, and some Karate Kid movies. That sounds like a good night to me.”

“Then I guess I should warn you now,” you say.

Eddie sits taller in his seat as he looks at you, apprehension clear on his face.

“About what?” he asks.

“Well, I’m not going to be able to stop talking about it once I’m high, so I might as well tell you now that I have the biggest crush on Ralph Macchio.”

Eddie laughs and drops his head down to rest against the picnic table.

“You scared the shit out of me,” he says when he sits back up.

“What? Thought I was going to say I have a crush on you?” you tease with a smirk. But Eddie doesn’t laugh like you expected him to, he just shrugs and avoids your eyes, hint of a smile on his lips.

“As long as your crush isn’t on William Zabka, I don’t care,” Eddie says.

“Ugh, no,” you say, scrunching up your nose. “Never a guy from Cobra Kai.”

“At least you’ve got some taste,” Eddie says with a teasing wink. He stands up from the table and walks around to your side. When he offers his hand out to you, you let him help you up off the bench, and then he takes your backpack and hooks over his shoulder. His free hand scoops up his black lunch tin and he starts walking in the direction of the football field.

“You coming?” he calls over his shoulder.

Broken out of your trance of watching him, you jog the few feet that Eddie got ahead of you. You walk side by side out of the woods and onto the turf of the football field.

“So, are we going to your place now?” you ask, fingers fiddling with the hem of your green sweater.

“We could,” Eddie says. “Or we could drop by your place while no one’s home and you can grab some clothes and stuff to stash at my place in case of emergencies.”

“You’d let me keep some stuff there?” you ask, almost in awe at his generosity.

“Well, yeah. I don’t think you’d want to be stuck wearing Hellfire or Metallica shirts all the time.”

Truthfully, the thought of you wearing Eddie’s clothes is something you both find appealing, though neither of you would say it to the other.

“Uh, sure,” you say as you follow Eddie to his van.

“House empty now?” Eddie asks as you make it to the parking lot.

“Should be. They both should be at work.”

“Then let’s get in and out before they know we were there.” Eddie opens the back doors of his truck and puts your backpack and his lunch box inside. After slamming the doors closed, he comes over to open the passenger door for you and assists you in getting up on the high seat. Once you’re settled, he takes his own position in the driver’s seat and starts the engine.

“Okay,” Eddie says as he begins to pull out of the Hawkins High School parking lot. “First stop at your house, then Family Video, then that mini market across the street from them so we can load up on snacks. Then back to my place for some plant-assisted relaxation.”

Down the highway a bit, Eddie pulls off on the street that leads to your house, and you look over at him.

“How do you know where I live?” you ask.

“Wayne and I helped the guy who married Lily move into that house when they first got engaged.”

“And you still remember how to get there?” You’re impressed, honestly.

“It’s a pretty small fucking town,” he says with a laugh.

Eddie turns down your street and the usual feelings of anxiety and apprehension aren’t there. Because Martin’s car won’t be in your driveway and neither should your mom’s. They’re out, working, which means you still have enough time to go in, get some things to leave at Eddie’s place, and get back out before they’re home. But having Eddie right next to you also helps to keep you calm. There’s something endearing and relaxing about him, but you’re still confident that he’d step up if something happened with your mom or Martin. Eddie wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, and if that challenge was protecting you? It’s a dizzying thought that you can’t quite wrap your head around.

It’s as if Eddie can read your thoughts, though. He reaches over and takes your hand in his large one. Giving it a few squeezes, he shoots a smile at you.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

#eddie munson #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson fanfic #request

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yourcoffeeguru · 1 year

Text

Rachael Hale Empty Metal Tin Black Terrier Dog || swtradepost

#rachael hale #empty metal tin #terrier dog #black terrier dog #swtradepost

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mylunajewel · 1 year

Photo

Empty Metal 3D Embossed Biscuit Tin || autradingpost || eBay

#empty biscuit tin #metal tin #christmas empty tins #collectible metal tins #autradingpost

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pinkanonwrites · 1 year

Text

Stargazers, New and Old

Another Vash fic! Forgive me, TWST Fans, I’m so deep in the paint on this guy it isn’t even funny.

Vash the Stampede/Reader, +3,000 Words, GN!Reader, Mutual Pining, Cuddling, Stargazing

Through your shared time as drifters, you and Vash had spent plenty of time together beneath the stars.

Granted, it was usually from the roof of whatever cheap hotel the two of you were staying at for the night, tearing into snacks and idly chatting about whatever Vash had or hadn’t accidentally managed to blow up that day. There’d even be a celebration sometimes, if things went right! Townsfolk would spill into the street, drinking and dancing and celebrating another one of Vash’s many perfectly timed victories as they piled your table high with heaped praise and overflowing mugs of alcohol. As hectic as they could end up being, you often got plenty of enjoyment out of the fuss, watching Vash stumble around sheepish and drunk as his praises were sung up to the starry evening sky.

But if you honestly had to choose? You’d say you enjoyed nights like these much better.

Sometimes Gunsmoke’s two suns would sink deep into the horizon and the two of you would find yourselves between towns, lost to the sands of the evening desert. Not too often, really. Usually Vash was quick to make sure you had at least the basic amenities readily nearby: food, running water, a creaky old motel mattress that was only barely better than sleeping on the floor. He was fine going without them for an evening or two, but he hated to put you out in any way. But sometimes you’d get stopped up along the way, or have to stealth around a bandit camp, or get distracted watching wild Thomases scamper up and down the sandy hillsides, and end up somewhere in the empty desert, iles from the nearest town.

Luckily both of you were prepared for this kind of thing at this point, Vash even proudly showing off some of his little “survival trinkets” he’d scooped up before meeting you, like a miniature campfire set that packed away into a pocket-sized tin.

“Ta-da!” And that was where the two of you found yourselves now, tucked around the fire at the base of a large dune, Vash presenting you with a metal camping mug full of instant noodles with all the pride and bravado of a chef presenting a five-course meal. “Your majesty, may I present…. Dinner!”

"Why thank you, chef." You took the mug with both hands, letting the warm metal soothe the calluses on your palms. As Vash prepared himself a mug you cracked him a sly smile. "Or are you more my court jester?"

"What, was 'knight in shining armor' already taken?" He chuckled, cupping his own mug in his gloved palms and sipping carefully. "YEOWCH! Still pretty hot! Be careful, m'kay?"

"I will." You blew on your own cup of broth before sipping it. Shuffling over a bit, you let yourself lean heavily into Vash’s side, leeching his excess body heat. A single glance up showed the rosy-red blush that began to creep across his face at the contact, but you chose not to comment on it. “It’s really amazing how cold the desert can get during the night.”

“It’s actually because there’s no humidity. Without the water in the air to hold the heat, it cools off a lot faster.” Vash took another slow slurp of his noodles, staring out over the vast landscape beyond your tiny fire. “Deathly hot in the daytime, dangerously cold in the night… It’s a really formidable place.” A familiar, distant expression overtook Vash’s face at that. He did his best to hide it from you but you’d long since caught on to it, those moments where his walls faltered and you could damn near watch in real time as the melancholy of a man who had seen far too much began to creep in along the edges.

“And yet, here we are.” You simply responded, gesturing to the small campfire with your mug before holding it up to Vash. You never really felt like you could offer him much in these moments, simple placations and apologies feeling far too hollow. But at the very least, you could offer this. “Cheers to surviving? Despite everything?”

He chuckled, low, soft, and tired, bringing his cup up to yours to clink the metal rims together. “Despite everything.”

You let your head thump gently against Vash’s shoulder, the two of you absorbing the cool silence of the desert night. There was little need for words between sips of noodles and broth; the silence with Vash never crept into uncomfortable. As the fire and your supper dwindled in unison the sky inched ever further towards utter blackness. With no towns within a good dozen or so iles in any direction the deep velveteen shades of space were even more apparent than usual, long strips of indigo and blue speckled with pinpoints of distant light.

“All done?” Vash finally spoke up, taking your empty mug from your outstretched hand. “I’ll take care of these if you want to get the sleeping bags ready.”

“Sure.”

The first few times you had slept out beneath the stars, you were adamant about having your sleeping bag a reasonable distance away from Vash’s. ‘Personal space,’ you insisted, even as he joked that you’d be too wooed by his natural charms if you slept any closer. But over time you just couldn’t help yourself. Getting to know Vash, to really know him, seemed to go hand in hand with your own sleeping bag drifting ever so slightly closer and closer to his with each passing night. Now you barely even blinked as you rolled the two of them out, side by side.

With a belly full of warm food and the promise of a cozy place to sleep ahead, the exhaustion seemed to wash over you in a sudden, leaden wave. You barely had the energy to kick your shoes off, shuffling yourself awkwardly into the bag until it was pulled nearly up to your chin. When Vash turned back around from putting your mugs away he barked out a short, surprised laugh.

“Comfy in there?”

You nodded, biting back a yawn as your eyelids fluttered. You watched through bleary lashes as Vash put the cap over the top of the pocket bonfire, snuffing the flame with a soft hiss and plunging his silhouette into moonlight. You could catch the vague shimmer off of his glasses lenses, the glint on the pauldron of his prosthetic arm, and the barest hint of a soft smile by the light of the five moons.

“I’ll finish cleaning up, why don’t you get some sleep?”

You nodded again, humming softly as you let your eyes slip fully shut and melted into the darkness behind your eyelids. “Mhm… Thank you, Vash.”

You swore that as the comfortable fuzz of sleep crept further into the edges of your mind, you felt a warm, metallic hand pat you gently atop your head.

And then, blackness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You normally slept incredibly well with Vash by your side, safe in the knowledge that whatever may happen, he’d be there to protect you.

Which is why it came as a bit of a shock to you when you jerked suddenly awake, the fog of some already-fading nightmare seeping away from your consciousness. Even as you struggled to recall it the details continued to slip away, flashes of smoke and gunmetal and blond hair streaked with clumped, drying blood all that remained on the peripheries of your subconscious. It left you as most nightmares do, feeling hollow and distinctly paranoid.

The chill in the air certainly didn’t help either. Even within the plush confines of your sleeping bag you could feel the cold cutting through, leaving your entire body tense and shivery, muscles aching. You certainly wouldn’t be getting back to sleep any time soon.

But just as you saw fit to roll over and curse your bad luck, you noticed Vash. He was sat upright, leaning back on the heels of his palms, sleeping bag pooled around his waist as he tipped his head up towards the night sky. His face was lit in profile by cool, white moonlight, and without his familiar tinted lenses on you could see the reflection of a thousand little stars in his aqua-colored eyes. A look of incredible serenity was upon his face. You almost hated to disturb it.

But at some point he must have felt your eyes trained upon him, because he turned his attention to you, and that distant, moony gaze seemed to focus into something soft and concerned.

“What are you still doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” You sat up and immediately regretted it, the frosty wind cutting straight through your thin, linen shirt. “Aren’t we getting up early tomorrow to beat the heat?”

“Yeah… Guess I just couldn’t sleep, is all.”

“Me neither.”

You fell silent again, following Vash’s gaze as it trailed back up towards the marbled sky. Shivering, you tucked your knees up to your chest and wrapped your arms around them as your eyes flit back and forth across those tiny, oh so distant specks of light. It was hard to even imagine that each one was just like one of your two suns, even harder to imagine that somewhere out there is where humans originally came from. Was Earth somewhere in this milky spiral of stars? Could you find it, one day, if you really looked hard enough? Or was it already too far gone, too distant or dim or lost to the hubris of the people who came long before you? You supposed you’d never really know for sure.

“Do you know any constellations?”

You startled a bit when Vash broke the silence, and just barely in the moonlight you could see him put up his hands as a sort of ‘Sorry!’ gesture. He’d had time to adjust to the dark, so maybe he could see you better than you could see him.

“Not really.” You replied. “I know what some of them are called but I could never figure out how you were supposed to find them.”

“Want me to show you? It’s really not that hard, if you know what to look for.”

You nodded, scooting your sleeping bag as close to Vash as you could get. He wrapped his right arm around you and rested his chin on your shoulder, reaching up towards the sky with his prosthetic. You could feel the warmth radiating off of him, thrumming like an old yet sturdy machine. He outstretched a single finger, a thin glow of blue-green energy pulsing beneath the metal as he pointed.

“See that bright one, right there?” His voice was barely above a murmur, hesitant to break the silence of the vast desert. “Follow my arm, it’s gonna be just at the tip of my finger.”

“I…Think so? Is it just to the left of that kinda red one?”

“There you go! That’s the main point of Luridae, the Scorpion. It’s supposed to be the tip of the tail. If you draw a line to the one right below it, then the one below that, you follow the trail and make like, an upside-down hook shape. Seven stars.”

“But how is that supposed to be a scorpion?”

“You’ve gotta use your imagination!” He laughed at your furrowed brow, moving his hand a bit further to the right and up. “If you can find Luridae you can find Sula, the Spear. That’s an easy one, it’s those five stars in a straight line, see? It points right towards the tail.”

You squinted, trying your best to follow Vash’s instructions. Sure enough, just up and to the right of that bright star was a line of five, neat in a row like someone had sketched them up there.

“I see it! It’s right there, right?” You brought your arm up right next to Vash’s, sides of your arms touching all the way up to your palms as you traced the line in the sky with your fingertip. Even the metal of his prosthetic was unnaturally warm, just enough to be comfortable, like it was still holding its heat from the evening sun.

“Yeah, you got it!” His cheek was nearly pressed to yours, and you could feel him smile at your success. The excitement was infectious, leaving you feeling floaty and light despite your exhaustion. “Wanna try a few more?”

“Sure! What about up here?” You tipped your head all the way back, staring straight up into the night sky, only to wince at the sharp twang of pain you felt in the back of your neck. “Ow.”

“You okay?” Vash’s face filled your vision, expression soft with concern. You just shrugged, rolling your shoulder and pressing your fingertips into the tense muscle.

“I’m fine, just tweaked my neck a little. The cold just makes all my muscles kind of achey."

Vash's hand rested on the side of your arm, almost hot to the touch against your chilled skin. How could he possibly run so warm? You wanted to melt into nothing more than a little ball curled up in the palm of his hand, dozing in the pleasant warmth it provided. Meanwhile his eyebrows had flown up his forehead, blinking incredulously at you.

"You're freezing! Why didn't you say anything?"

"I dunno! I didn't wanna bother you? Besides, I didn't notice until I woke up, anyway!"

He frowned at you, unconsciously jutting out his lower lip in an adorable pout that made your heart stammer in your chest. He made a lot of faces like this, smug little smiles after a trick shot or delighted beaming grins over dinner, even those soft, bittersweet little expressions he'd shoot your way when he thought you weren't looking; faces that made you want to just throw caution to the wind and lean in and kiss him until you both ran hot and breathless.

But you couldn't. Vash liked to joke about how fearless you were, unafraid of tailing after the Humanoid Typhoon through each town and city he blew through, but you weren't that brave. Not enough to risk the possible rejection of the person you cherished most in the world, even if he was under the impression he was doing it for your benefit. No, you were nowhere near that brave. Not yet.

"Maybe you'll just have to share with me then, if you want to keep warm!~"

"Can I?"

You both stiffened, neither of you expecting your response to actually come out of your mouth. Vash was clearly trying to tease you, you could see that now by the wide eyes and startled red fluster on his cheeks, but you'd been so deep in your own thoughts you hadn't even registered it properly until the words were already out of your mouth. You clammed up quickly, the back of your neck feeling hot and prickly as you cupped your hands over it and turned jerkily away from him.

"Ah! Sorry, I didn't- I wasn't really thinking I was just- You know I should have known you were just joking, so… so let's just go back to sleep. Sorry. This is weird… sorry."

You'd definitely said sorry way too many times. And he'd definitely noticed. But maybe he'd actually cut you some slack for once and not point out how effectively you'd just humiliated yourself in front of him. Or maybe you could just roll yourself up in your sleeping bag like a pill bug and in the morning you'd forget this entire exchange even happened.

"...Do you really want to?" He mumbled, warm fingertips resting on your upper arm again and sending a shiver down the length of your spine. He didn't pull away even when you flinched at the contact, voice staying hesitant, small, almost like he was trying to soothe a skittish animal. "I don't want you to freeze or anything. I really don't mind."

"It's not weird?" You'd almost mustered up the courage to ask 'I didn't make things weird?' but you chickened out at the last moment catching a glimpse of Vash's soft expression when peering at him from the corner of your eye.

"No, it's totally fine! I run kind of hot anyway. I can be your heated blanket." Seating himself all the way upright, Vash opened his arms to you, and it took everything you had not to dive into them the second the gesture was offered.

Trying not to look as eager as you were, you slipped carefully out of your own sleeping bag, shuddering as you were buffeted by the evening air. It was a bit of an awkward clamber, one you tried desperately not to think too hard about as you burrowed your way in right next to Vash. He was a big guy, and the sleeping bag was barely big enough for him to begin with, so once you got yourself situated you found that you were basically snug up against him from your ankles all the way up to your neck. And oh, was it everything you'd imagined to be and more. You were curled up into his right side; he'd tucked you up in such a way that your head was resting right on his shoulder with his arm slung around you, keeping you close. The thin fabric of your pajamas did nothing to quell the heat that rolled off of Vash's body and seeped into your own. It was a familiar, achingly safe kind of warmth, like falling asleep in an afternoon sunbeam coming through the window and landing across a soft mattress. It felt right. It felt like home.

"Comfy?" His voice was so soft a murmur you could barely make it out, and you nodded for fear of any words being let out giving away your true feelings on the situation. How were you ever supposed to sleep on your own again, knowing that this bliss was just within arms reach? "That's good. Hey, try looking up now?"

You blinked up at the night sky, an endless expanse of stars and moons stretched over your heads. His free arm rose again, fingertip tracing an abstract, polygonal form against the starry backdrop.

"Rivus Minor, the Little River. You can follow it across the sky, just like this. Follow my hand, okay?"

"Yeah." You whispered, for you didn't think you had the strength nor the courage to speak any louder. You'd follow his hand as it traced the stars. You'd follow him to the driest, most desperate towns, the true wastelands. You'd follow him through hell and back out again, to the most barren edges of No Man's Land and back, a thousand times over. Even if he tried to leave you behind, for your protection he'd say, for your safety, you wouldn't be able to help but follow. You'd follow him through blood and gun-smoke and tears and keep following beyond. As long as Vash was there, you couldn't help but be there too.

"Okay. I'll follow you."

#trigun #trigun stampede #trigun x reader #vash the stampede #vash #vash the stampede x reader #vash x reader #pink chat #my writing

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prolix-yuy · 1 year

Text

Rising Phoenix

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Summary: The Mandalorian offers a gift greater than he imagined.

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: M, allusions to sexual acts, some heavy petting, flirty banter up the wazoo, minor injury treatment, hand kink, hand worship, plot? Plot. While this story is not explicit, my blog and the content shared on it is 18+ MINORS DNI.

Notes: Is this an excuse for me to put all of my favorite things about Mando into one story? Yes, yes it is. Including making fun of that tin can man's ridiculous fashion choices.

Takes place after If the Moon Walks Out.

Cross-posted on AO3

I Think of You Series Masterlist

Mando is hiding something from you.

If anyone on the outside was looking in, they’d think the opposite. They might even say he’s being more open than in months. After the bite and subsequent breakdown (which you’re still a little embarrassed about), Mando started showing you how he runs the Crest. Walking you through a takeoff sequence, demonstrating what the other buttons along the cargo hold walls do.

(you didn’t know there was a button to close Mando’s cramped cubby)

(might come in handy when you want a little privacy)

You were appreciative at first, until Mando started disappearing in the evenings with no warning or explanation. One minute he’d be feeding the child, the warm thrum of your cavewoman brain revving up -

(he wiped the child’s mouth with the edge of his cape and you had to go take a breather in the kitchenette)

- the next moment he was gone, up in the cockpit or down in the hold, wherever you’re not. A whiff of solder sometimes wafted by, or the clunk of metal on metal reached your ears. You’re curious, endlessly so, but if there’s one thing you would not betray, it’s the trust Mando has finally given you.

(he’ll come to you when he’s ready)

Instead you prepare food and tidy the hold and read on your holopad until he returns, either to bid you goodnight with the child tucked into his arm, or to put him down before sneaking back to you, large hands on your hips a precursor to his hushed question:

“Can I have you tonight, Mesh’la?”

(more often than not your nights end with him inside you)

But as the days continue, another bounty on the horizon, your treacherous mind begins toying with your insecurities. The next planet wasn’t far but Mando’s taking his time, making short hops instead of fast travel. When you questioned it, the threat of Imps and blaster residue in your nostrils, he said it was to show you how to hop in and out of hyperspace.

(the holopad full of calculations makes your head spin)

(you hold it like a lifeline)

“Mando, I appreciate you taking my feelings to heart, but moving this slow…aren’t we tempting our luck?” you finally asked, legs crossed in the jump seat when Mando pulled out of hyperspace yet again.

“I’m willing to press it,” he replied, “but not much longer. Tomorrow we land.”

“Could have landed three days ago,” you said, goading Mando to turn to you. He cocked the helmet, which still managed to thrill you, and leaned back.

“I thought you enjoyed my company,” he said, the tease making you smile. “You certainly did last night.” Your face turned molten as you played up a salacious gasp.

“That was a low blow, Mandalorian, you won’t get many more nights like that if you use them against me,” you scolded, biting back a bigger smile when Mando stood up to tower over you, cocking his hip.

(what you wouldn’t give to leave a mark on the flesh there)

(make him wear it under the armor)

(your own symbol of devotion)

“That’s an empty threat,” he said coolly, making you roll your eyes before he tucked his knuckle under your chin, swiping his thumb over your lower lip.

(a Keldabe kiss is one thing)

(this kiss is only for you)

“Only a little longer, Mesh’la. I promise it’s worth it.” he said, quieter, and you nodded, wrapping your hand around his wrist. One squeeze before he moved to the cargo hold.

“I was going to show you how to dump the waste reserves today,” he called up the ladder as he descended.

“Oh thank the Maker, the suspense was killing me!”

You chased his huffed laugh.

An arid planet comes into focus, the child perched in your lap as Mando begins descending into the atmosphere.

“We’re a day early, bounty’s not expected to be on world until tomorrow,” Mando says as the Crest leans into entry, hull shaking against the heat as it skims over the bubble-like surface of the atmosphere.

“What should we do until then?” you ask, lifting the child a little higher so he can watch the descent. “Looks like a dry planet, Bean, no frogs for you.” His trill of disappointment makes you wonder, yet again, if he understands you more than the energies you assume he’s reading. The thought is dashed from your mind as you focus on Mando’s technique, riding the curve of the planet until gravity begins to tug you down in your seat. The Crest dives like a much more graceful bird than her silhouette, weaving through clouds and pockets of rougher air as a stretch of open land surges up to meet you. With a gentle lurch (good job landing Mando), you’re back on solid ground and the child is chirping at his father.

“Yeah kid, we can go outside. We’re far out, should be safe,” Mando says, directing the last part of the sentence to you. As you make your way to the ramp Mando calls down.

“Wear something warm.”

Your head cocks at the request.

“It’s a desert, I’ll cook alive.”

“Trust me.”

You exchange a look with the child, who lifts and drops his ears in as close of an approximation to, “Beats me.” You shrug on a long-sleeve shirt (one of Mando’s old ones, you still covet a few) and comfortable boots. Giving the button a slap, you wait for Mando by the cargo ramp as hot air blows into the hold.

“I don’t agree with your opinion on the climate,” you call back, turning when his footsteps near. “I think the armor’s skewed your perception of heat.”

“You’ll need it for this.”

In Mando’s hands is a harness, leather straps reinforced with thick thread along the seams. A hefty buckle centers in the loops, which attach to the baffling item in question.

(a jetpack?)

Mando has his on too, clasped into the backplate of his armor. This secondary one is more beat-up, yellow and green paint flaking off in places. It hangs heavy, the straps gathered in one hand as he lifts it to you.

“It’s old, but it works fine. Used to belong to Cobb Vanth,” Mando says, shifting a little as you watch him with parted lips. Your eyebrows raise briefly at the name of the Mos Pelgo Mandalorian you ventured to meet when (your) Mando was still among the stars. The jetpack, however, and all its potential holds your attention.

When you don’t say anything, Mando continues. “The Rising Phoenix is calibrated to my vambrace, but this one could be programmed to a…” He trails off as you step closer, shifting the child in your arms to reach out and finger the leather strapping. “Is this okay?” he finally asks, low and quiet as you feel the T-visor burn along your cheeks.

“You made this?” you finally say, barely registering Mando taking the child from you so you can inspect the rig. “This is why we were taking so long?” you breathe out, realization warming you.The stitching is tight and neat, the soldering clean. It even looks like he tried to remove some of the flaking paint but gave up. He shrugs briefly.

“Makes sense for you to use it. It’s likely to draw attention. But if there’s trouble, it’s fast,” Mando says, his body language cautious right now. He must have been nervous at the proposition, anticipating your apprehension, but you feel anything but. This hunk of junk repurposed to protect you is a greater gift than he understands. It makes you break out into a dazzling smile.

“This is karking amazing!” you shout, the child joining in as you turn over the rig and inspect it from all angles. Mando’s chuckle sends tingles down your spine, and when you meet the visor again you can imagine a bashful smile gracing his face.

(a face you’ll never see, but dream of all the same)

“How do you…” you start, holding the jetpack to your chest like a child on Life Day.

“A desert planet with nothing to do seemed like a good place to teach you,” Mando says, sauntering down the ramp, the child’s ears bouncing. Your heart hammers into high speed while sweat beads along your hairline.

(you’re going to fly today)

Mando takes an especially long time to walk you through the components of the jetpack, how it works and what each part does. You’re barely containing your excitement, hovering over his quick-moving hands and nodding endlessly.

“What’s this for?” you ask, pointing at a cylinder in the center that looks empty. Mando shakes his head.

“That’s for another day, Mesh’la, today we’re flying,” he deflects, and you don’t push. The possibility of being weightless, suspended in air the way you’d only experienced in dreams, was a much greater distraction.

“Do you have the controller?” Mando asks. You flash the metal gauntlet on your wrist. It’s just as cleanly built, a small series of buttons that do the basics. You’ve ridden speeders with more complicated controls. Though speeders barely leave the ground.

“Ready?” he asks, holding the straps open for you to slip into. You flash him a bright smile before turning around, shouldering the bulky machinery like a school bag. It settles on the center of your back, Mando fussing with the chest clip and adjusting the tension of the straps.

“This needs a real harness, but for now it’ll work.” Mando slides his fingers under the restraints to test their tautness. “It won’t distribute your weight, so no long trips. You’ll bruise up.”

“I can handle a few bruises,” you challenge, a coy smile melting onto your face as Mando slows his pacing. He tips the helmet in, tugging on the central buckle once more.

“Cheeky,” he purrs before stepping away, typing something into his vambrace. You twist and test the harness. It’s a comforting level of snug, the kind that makes you feel made of durasteel. The child, left to his devices during the suit up, pats at your calf.

“Am I looking cool, Bean?” you ask, doing a quick spin for giggles. “I need a cape like your dad to go…with…” You trail off, a wicked little smile replacing your coy one. “Hey Mando,” you call out innocently, drawing his gaze. “Did you always have the Rising Phoenix?”

He tilts his head with some hesitancy.

“No.”

“So when we first met, you didn’t have it.”

“No.”

“And I remember you having quite the impressive cape back then.”

“I’ve always had…”

“And now it’s a little, you know. Worn. A little tattered. Maybe a little…burned.”

Mando stares you down and it takes all of your effort not to lose it.

“Do you…wear the cape when you’re flying, Mando?”

He shifts from one foot to the other.

“It takes a lot of work…”

“Oh my Stars, you do!”

Mando shifts into what you’ve come to call the Exasperated Stance, hands on his hips, shoulders squared, helmet tipped back.

“It’s easier to…”

“Mando, you are going to set yourself on fire, you kriffing idiot. I can see the scorch marks!”

Mando advances on you, and you skip backwards. Your hands fly to the controller on your wrist. It’s easy to psych yourself out thinking about flying, but with Mando stalking your way, your pounding heart could be attributed to that.

“Mesh’la…” he growls, but with little fire behind it.

(unlike the amount of fire he’s definitely set to that useless piece of fabric)

“Mando…” you mimic, hand dancing over the gauntlet like a gunslinger about to draw his weapon.

“Stop it.”

(perfect)

“Catch me and make me,” you taunt, taking off into a real run. Mando’s footsteps falter, then pick up speed behind you.

(now or never)

You press the short series of buttons to ignite the jetpack, your speed masking the initial jolt of thrust when it catches.

“Wait!” Mando shouts behind you. For a moment you do feel bad for the plaintive plea threading his shout, but adrenaline kicks in and if you do this right, you’ll be flying.

(if you do it wrong, well, you’ll just have a bruised ego…along with a few other places)

Three more long strides and the thrust lifts you off the ground, a disbelieving laugh following. Your feet dangle uselessly as you lift off, the wind in your ears drowning out further shouts. Faintly you hear another roar of ignition, Mando likely to yank you back out of the sky, but euphoria is all you can absorb. The drop in your stomach evens out as you slow your climb, easing the throttle until you’re hovering about fifty feet off the ground. You kick your legs, heat kissing the back of your thighs reminding you to be careful. Below, the sable sand and rock stretches like a rolling canvas, the undulations of hills and sharp creases of mountains in the distance shifting perspective as you absorb beauty at a height you’ve never known.

“Are you crazy?” Mando shouts, zipping into view right in front of you, broad beskar body blocking out the horizon you were just admiring. The startle makes your finger slip, and you drop ten feet fast, Mando’s hands chasing you. Regaining control, you zip away from him.

“I’m getting the hang of it!” you laugh back. His posture is rigid as he flies close behind, more disciplined with technique. You’re just happy that you haven’t crashed face-first into the hard packed dirt yet. Below the child watches you weave around, little hands raised when you zoom overhead. Narrowly avoiding Mando when he reaches out, no doubt to slow you down or scold you further, you speed up with the barest recognition that this is probably a bad idea.

“Look at this Bean!” you shout down, wobbling your shoulders back and forth until you discover how much sway banks you left or right. It doesn’t feel real, like you’re flying in a dream, even though the wind whips past your face and the straps pull painfully against your ribs.

(it feels like freedom)

A flash of silver glints in the corner of your eye and Mando is pulling up beside you, one hand clamping down on your bicep.

“Enough. Land,” he shouts, but for the first time in ages you feel light, like every care on your shoulders was left in the dirt. You don’t want to touch down and let it crawl back up yet.

Plus, it’s been too long since you sparred with Mando.

The controls are surprisingly intuitive, though considering he made them for you might that speaks to his intelligence. Or insight. But now he must be cursing his thoughtfulness because you speed up and up, the weight of his armor lagging him behind. His grip loosens and you spin away again, testing how quickly you can change direction. The dance continues, Mando’s hands coming close, his voice lost to the roar of the packs and the wind whipping against your cheeks. You push him back, kicking him in the chest once and feeling a little bad about it.

He finally yanks you down by your ankle, flipping you so the propulsion shoots you towards the ground. Righting yourself more nimbly than expected, he barrels into you and digs his fingers into your waistband.

“Stop. Teasing.” The growl is heavy, but even he can’t hide the winded excitement of the chase under the vocoder. You’re sure if you palmed him now he’d be hard.

(jetpack sex)

(no way, that’s how idiots go about dying)

“Make. Me. Mando,” you pant, hitting a random button on his vambrace. Thankfully it just stutters his jetpack, grip slipping enough for you to wriggle out. You want to see if you can do a loop, entertain the child below, fly along the horizon the way you’d always dreamed of when two desert suns set on your planet.

The jetpack lurches hard against you. The ever-present heat skirting down your thighs lessens. Something smells like chemicals and smoke.

(out of fuel)

(DANK FARRIK)

All the elation building in your chest freezes to terror when gravity pulls you, but before you can shout Mando’s hands jam under the harness, wrenching you to his chest as all your gravity-defying stunts fizzle out. You thud your forehead against his paudron as he lowers you back to solid earth, talking yourself down from the brief heart attack. Once your feet touch down you back away, Mando’s grip easing as you sweep sweat and dust from your forehead.

“Thanks for the rescue,” you mutter, cheeks hot with embarrassment before you turn your attention to the little green child hurrying his way over. “How’d you like the show Bean?” Kneeling down, he practically tumbles into your open arms, clawing his way up to your face to pat at your cheeks. “I’m okay buddy, had the time of my life up there thanks to…” Looking over at Mando you can almost see the frustration wafting off him in waves.

(kriff, you really pissed him off this time)

“Okay, how about we pop you in here and send you back to the Crest while I get a lecture,” you murmur as you tuck the child into the silver pram and send it scooting. The child looks back once, concerned ears perking, but turns back around when you wave him off. Mando’s footsteps approach heavily, scuffing in the dirt. You sigh, scrubbing a hand over your face.

“I’m sorry…” you start to say, ready for the harsh reprimand you’re sure is coming.

(how can you explain the wonderful gift he just gave to you?)

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” he says, dangerously low. His shoulders are tight, forehead almost pressed to yours. You can see how intimidating being on the Mandalorian’s bad side could be.

“I was…” you try to say, the emotionless visor following your gaze. The horizon, sparkling with midday sun, is where your gaze finally lands. “I’ve always dreamed of flying. I got carried away. I’m sorry.”

Seconds tick by as you wait for a scold, but it doesn’t come. Instead Mando sighs, and two heavy hands drop on your shoulders.

“You’re lucky I caught you,” he murmurs, squeezing briefly. You bring your eyes back to the smoky T-visor and quirk a wan smile.

“Seems like I’m always falling for you.”

(would that be such a bad thing?)

Mando stills, then cradles your cheek in his hand. The cool kiss of beskar on your forehead raises goosebumps despite the desert heat.

“Mesh’la,” he groans, “don’t tease.”

“Not teasing now, Mando.”

A rumble in his chest burns straight to your sex.

“Yeah? You’ll be good for me?”

(oh kark)

Mando twists you in his arms, back to front. The jetpack puts too much bulk between you, making you have to bend at the waist, but it’s immediately evident this is exactly what Mando wants. He palms your hips, dragging his hand up to stroke your stomach before sliding down to cup you over your pants.

“You want this?” he asks, but he’s already kneading at your mound, the heavy swipe of his fingers through your clothes sparking heat in your cunt.

“Mando…” you choke out, hands coming back to grab at his narrow hips. You’re unbalanced and clumsy against his unyielding stance. “The child.” His little silver pod is ascending the ramp into the Crest. Mando chuckles.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be quick.”

Your cunt clenches, ripples of pleasure as you scratch your nails into the rough weave of his pants. The jetpack tugs against your chest and you realize he’s using it as leverage to pull you back into him.

(jetpack sex jetpack sex jetpack sex)

“Feel what you do to me, Mesh’la. All the kriffing time.”

Your hands scrabble behind you, fumbling between your bodies.

(give it to me)

(all of it)

(all of you)

Mando shifts, jostling your body a fraction to the side. There’s a sudden white hotness against your arm and you cry out, jerking against his hold.

(the exhaust pipe)

The jetpack is still cooling down, hot rings of metal that just touched you at the worst possible time. Mando’s grip disappears immediately, the press of his body against you suddenly gone.

“What happened?” he says, and the vocoder can’t hide his concern. You twist your arms back up by your face, straightening back to standing. There’s a small welt, hot to the touch. You’ve barely inspected it yourself when Mando’s familiar orange-tipped gloves take your hand into his.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, careful not to touch the mark but still holding your arm so gently.

(oh Mando)

(never)

“Just touched the exhaust, nothing a little bacta can’t fix,” you say breezily, but you know the moment’s passed. Mando’s already leading you back to the Crest, and you follow begrudgingly.

(trust you to ruin some of the hottest foreplay with an injury)

The child burbles at your entrance, hovering the pram over to where you sit at the table, injury outstretched on the durasteel. You turn your arm to touch the burn against it, offering a tiny sliver of relief from the dull throb. Mando bustles into a cargo cubby, pulling out the medkit you’d put to good use barely a week before. A packet of bacta gel, and the Mandalorian, settle across from you.

“I promise, I’m okay,” you say with a lopsided smile, reaching for the bacta. He snags it up first, motioning for you to reveal the burn. It’s halfway up your forearm, the flesh rising.

“I know,” Mando says before tugging at the tips of his gloves.

(Maker)

The last time you got to watch this ritual closely (not clouded by lust or in a frantic scramble) was when he stood at the foot of the bed in Joeken’s inn. You’d admired his wide palms, his thick fingers, how capable they looked. There’s much there you remember, but age and circumstance changes all. There are more scars along his knuckles, callused and rough. He almost glows in the artificial lighting, a deep golden tone forever under his skin. Being able to savor it screams of transgression.

“Let me,” he says, breaking you from your reverie. You extend your arm into his reach, the scratch of his well-worked fingertips tracing the injury. He squeezes a small amount of bacta onto the burn and works it in with two fingers, the touch featherlight and gliding. Mesmerized by the methodical strokes, your other hand drifts to the back of his hand, your fingertips sliding over the smoother skin. His fingers falter as you both watch the slow advance of skin on skin.

“Mesh’la,” Mando breathes. You start to retract, afraid of an overstep. “No, it’s…” he stutters out, “It’s okay. Just not…used to it.”

(touch him until he forgets what it was like to go without)

Bacta application forgotten (or completed), Mando cups your injured hand, tracing the lines in your palm that supposedly speak of your future. You let your own wandering touch linger along the mountains of his knuckles, slip along the veins and raised injuries, before resting on his wrist. His chest hitches like he’s in pain, or something much sweeter.

“Does it still hurt?” he asks, now holding your hand between both of his.

“No, much better,” you answer, leaning when a flash of black catches your eye. Your mouth and one eyebrow quirks up. “Who gave you that?”

Mando turns his wrist, a black tattoo - two rings around a dot - appearing on the webbing between his thumb and pointer finger.

(target)

“Paz. A brother in arms.”

You stroke over it, no discernible texture.

“Did he give you more?” you ask cheekily. The child hovers closer to inspect his guardian’s ink, tilting his head and softly cooing.

“You’ll have to find those yourself,” he says, the edge of sass in his voice making you giggle. You move to pull away but his hands wrap around yours, warm and gentle for implements of such bloodshed.

“I never want to hurt you,” he says, much quieter. The vocoder almost loses his consonants. “If I ever do…”

“Hush,” you scold, leaning over the table to meet the visor. “It was an accident. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of them.” The stillness in his posture twists your stomach.

(he’d be devastated if he harmed you)

“You could never hurt me,” you say. Mando tilts his head, the sentiment too simplistic. But all of its meanings fill the silence.

(you would never do it purposefully)

(I’ll always forgive you)

(I would rather be hurt than without you)

With molten slowness Mando leans over your arm, raising it between you. You think it’s to inspect the burn, see that the bacta is working, but he just stares at it for a long moment. His hand drifts to the edge of his helmet, aimless and lost. When you touch him again he snaps back, standing up quickly.

“I have to make some preparations for tomorrow,” he squeezes out, taking a half step back. His movements are sluggish, quickening only when he strides away.

“Thank you, Mando,” you call as he mounts the ladder. He gives a nod, tugging his gloves on before climbing the ladder into the cockpit. The child hovers by your side, looking up at his retreating father figure before reaching up to you.

“Been a bit of a day, hasn’t it Bean?” you say, lifting the child out of the pram. The warmth of his touch lingers, the images of his hands holding yours only a blink away.

The baby yawn is all the answer you need.

In the cockpit, Din leans down and braces his hands on the console, trying to slow his pounding heart. He’s been inside you, why was letting you touch his bare hands more intimate? He’d had to cover them up to stop reliving every caress, the way your eyes roamed along the only bit of skin he’d allowed you to observe. His face burns with self-consciousness but also the thrill of your exploration.

But as much as that all excited him, it was that final moment that drove his heart into his throat and made him feel lightheaded. Because he held your hand and looked at the burn - an injury he caused, however inadvertently - and let a fleeting thought grow wild in his mind.

Kiss it better.

Something his mother would do with a scraped knee or a bruised finger.

Kiss it better.

Those three words grew from a whisper to an ocean roar as he considered how your skin would feel under his lips. If he could lift the helmet just enough to touch but not for you to see.

That wouldn’t risk his Creed.

Yes it would.

He crushed the desire down, left you behind a little more confused than before, but safe and cared for in his ship. Safe with the child and with him.

You could never hurt me.

You’re right. Din would never, could never bring harm to you. But some days, like today, he can see how much harm you could do to him. With your bright smile and open heart and patience, you could destroy the Mandalorian.

But from those ashes, Din Djarin could grow.

A flashing light grounds him as he flips on a holo-message. A halo of messy curls and a sassy expression glows to life, the dull scrapes and whines of a working hanger in the background. Din cocks his head as the message plays.

“Mando! Long time no see! Not that I miss that hunk of junk ship of yours. Well, I do miss the credits it brings in. Anyway, I’ve got a lead for you. You wanted those, right? About the Mandalorians? Got a client who may know where some are. The info’s not for free, I’ll fill you in when you get here. Bit of a time crunch, though, so you better shift that rust bucket into hyperspeed. You’re her last hope.”

Peli Motto’s image fizzles into static, and a blanket of duty settles back on Mando’s shoulders. A mission long paused. An outcome he comes to dread more with each passing day. A galaxy that spun on without the three of you for a long while.

But there is much work still to be done.

END

Episode 11 of the I Think of You Series

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